speaking of language viruses

1. One of the stupidest phrases of 1990’s America (it may have started in the late 1980’s) was “happy campers.” You couldn’t just tell a group of people that they looked happy, you had to tell them they looked like “happy campers.” Not sure if that was triggered by a line in a film, or was just borrowed from summer camp culture more generally. Whatever the cause, it was among the most idiotic language viruses to hit American English in my adult life. Thank God it didn’t stick.

2. Whenever someone is in a jam and has nothing to say, they can always fall back on the “have been, is, and shall remain” trope. Example… Question: “Do you think that philosophers need to be knowledgable at the cutting edge of science?” Answer: “There have been such philosophers, and continue to be, and surely in the future there will be such philosophers.” We learn nothing from such statements, and it works only in the context of deliberate scathing humor, such as when James Carville responded to a false report about him from Fox News by saying: “Fox has been, is, and shall remain an ignorant and asinine network.” That’s funny. But otherwise, it’s a dumb construction.

Those are two of my least favorite things. Now, enter former Vice President Dan Quayle, in his farewell address to the people of American Samoa following a brief visit:

“You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be.”